[Sca-cooks] Shopping as Economic Warfare

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

From: Stefan li Rous <stefan at texas.net>
>Another good one that I like is how Baron Akim got his quinces to make
>quince paste two years ago. Quinces are usually rather expensive in
>the grocery. They also happen to need to be overly ripe before you
>can use them. (See the quinces-msg file in the Florilegium). Anyway,
>Akim managed to time it to show up at his grocery when the quinces
>were beginning to look old and "gooey". And offered the grocery a
>fraction of their original asking price for these ugly, doubtlessly
>about to go to waste, fruits. And thus he came to Pennsic with a
>large container of quince paste which some of us there got to taste.

Well, this is the first time i've ever heard of using over-ripe
quinces. A ripe quince is really really hard but incredibly
wonderfully fragrant. I've never seen a gooey quince and one like
that would be rather "gone". For jams and pates one generally doesn't
use the spoiled ones, but I am not dissing Baron Akim, since quinces
are quite expensive, and i think he did fine, talking the grocer down
to a good price.

I bought a whole case of them in November

I cooked half of them down for the Limoun-Safarjali / Lemon-Quince
syrup i made for the Iron Chef Persian feast circa Nov. 10 - heavenly
stuff. I discovered a bottle of the stuff in a Persian market near
me, but, well, mine was much tastier. Amazing how some recipes linger
over the centuries... The commercial stuff didn't have rosewater,
though, so i dumped a bit into the bottle, which i have for personal
use. I did NOT server it at the feast. Of course it sure was easier
opening a bottle than cooking down half a case of quinces, straining
them, cooking the liquid down some more, etc.

I kept the rest of the case for the Boar Hunt, Dec. 8 for the German
Chicken with Quinces. Definitely cheaper by the case than by the
pound.

Anahita